Meeting Einstein: Adele Goldberg – Einstein Stiftung Berlin

How do we know what to say?

Lecture and discussion with Adele Goldberg, Einstein Visiting Fellow and Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University

Just open your mouth and get started! – This seems to be the way speaking works. But is it really that simple? Although we are hardly ever aware of it, the ability to use language is based on an enormous amount of knowledge. Being a competent speaker requires an understanding not only of general rules, but also of complex details.

The talk will take the audience on an amazing tour to some of the most interesting aspects of our implicit knowledge of language, including how we learn what not to say without being taught.

Adele Goldberg

Adele Goldberg is Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University. She is one of the leading proponents of a constructionist approach to grammar. Since October 2010, she has been Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion" at Freie Universität Berlin (FU).